There should be a standard, anonymously awardable prize for people that manage to enrage a large collective subgroup of the internet. Sort of a little silver "Met the internet, didn't like it, moved on." plaque. If someone can come up with a clear, pithy, non-malicious phrasing, that is at least 17.3 times better than my clumsy suggestion, I'll fabricate such a plaque and send it to Mr. Carreon as an award.
Such a plaque should, being from the internet, feature an engraved copy of the goatse image, with suitable text. Something like, "I was reamed by the internet for $40,000 and all I get was this lousy plaque"?
It is always nice to see frivolous legal proceedings backfire on the perpetrator. My wife, being a lawyer, always challenges me when I say that anyone can sue for anything, no matter how frivolous. I hear of enough outrageous things on a regular basis that it's hard not to imagine this being so. Glad to see her proven right.
Also Adria Richards, Paul Christoforo, Woody Harrelson's management (post-Rampart AMA), etc, etc. Perhaps a 1st annual lifetime achievement to Sanford Wallace for his pioneering work in this area.
Surely Canter & Siegel deserve first place. I was priviledged to be one of just thousands of people to inform them that their "green card lottery" usenet post was inappropriate when I first saw it in a comp.sys. newsgroup. Turns out everyone else on usenet had the same idea - it took out the mail server of one of the larger ISPs of the time. This was the seminal spam event - the term was coined because of this event.
I nominate the Prenda law firm, which sued lots of people for downloading copyrighted material and is now in increasingly deep legal trouble due to its questionable legal practices. You can read about the saga here:
I'm not so sure about that. A lot of people were amused by his comments, by many fewer were actually offended. He did suffer some setbacks, but nothing career-threatening.
At the risk of sounding rude, he kinda brought this on himself. And I'm quite astounded a guy who's supposed to be well versed in law, particularly in the internet arena and in freedom of speech, would go this far. All he had to do was admit a mistake and let bygones be bygones.
Also, his wife is nuts! Anyone see the meant-to-disparage "poetry" on her forum?
Rude? You sound logical and sane. This asshole deserved every piece of the judgement and quite frankly a whole lot more. He's identical in nature to the patent trolls plaguing our entire industry.
"As for the breakdown of the fees, it's $8,450 for the initial case... and the other $37,650.25 all stems from Carreon's crazy fight against attorney fees."
I feel very sorry for this guy. He's likely seriously harmed or maybe ruined his career as a lawyer. Acting out of emotion and hubris is a terrible mistake, but understandable, like a Greek tragedy; a cautionary tale for anyone who's ever felt hurt or anger. I hope somehow he recognises where he went wrong, and chooses differently in future.
That said, if he forced people to incur those costs, of course it's just that he recompense them. I think if he does so, calmly and sincerely, he may yet redeem himself.
I wish him well for finding balance, though I wonder if someone like himself can shut up long enough. I mean, he initially thought he was ~helping~ his career with all the attention.
